The Fitch Sprint in Car and Driver

   Fitch produces the Sprint in a nondescript four-bay garage in the tiny community of Falls Village, a few miles from the Lime Rock race track. He's been in the business several years now, and the demand for both separate components and completely outfitted cars has reached a point where a small but active staff is being supplemented by a dozen special suppliers in both the United States and Great Britian.
   Operating on the thesis that the already-impressive Corvair makes the basis for an outstanding American tourer, Fitch markets a line of nearly 40 special options designed to make the car run faster, corner better, stop more efficiently and look racier. These devices can be purchased individually for any Corvair, but they are specifically intended as the parts of a whole package that transforms a standard 140-hp Corsa two-door coupe into a Corvair Sprint.
   Eleven items make up the basic Sprint package. They range from a $24.00 engine modification job, which adds about 15 horsepower, to a free pair of spiffy polished aluminum nameplates. It all costs $383.65 installed, $306.40 if you want to do it yourself.

   The engine modifications are simple and effective. Four small air cleaners and a slightly altered crankcase breather are the basic components, though the three degrees of ignition advance which Fitch & Co. add doubtlessly contributes to the increased poke.
   The GT suspension—at $56.00 installed—really works. Included for the front and rear suspension are four progressive-rate, auxiliary rubber springs similar to the AEON units used on some Ferraris, and a pair of adjustable Gabriel shock absorbers for the rear. The front suspension is set at four degrees positive caster and a quarter-degree positive camber. The rear camber is reset at one and a half degrees negative.
Special, shorter steering arms that have been heat-treated and Magnufluxed come with the Sprint package for $46.00. They cut the ratio to 15:1 (from 23:1) and, when utilized with the optional steering damper ($29.50), turn the Corvair steering into a thing of beauty. The damper is the Delco unit employed on the Sting Ray, with special mounting brackets. Should you desire both the damper and the special steering arms, they can be purchased at a unit cost of $59.00, installed.   Everybody knows that GT cars have to have wood-rim steering wheels, and John Fitch makes one available with holes in the tempered aluminum spokes and everything. It will cost you $59.00 and, though it isn't going to make you a Jim Clark (he uses a leather-covered wheel—Fitch sells those too, for $9.95) it will do wonders for the interior of your Corsa.
    Another $9.95 will get you a Lucas Flamethrower driving light installed in place of the regular left-handed high-beam unit. Our test car had a pair of Flamethrowers painted with Holt's "Fog Cote" yellow dye for continental driving and the tint added an extremely distinctive note to the front of the car.
   When anybody starts to grump about the Corvair, they sooner or later get around to the rather shabby interior appointments, and Fitch has taken several steps to cure this deficiency. The wood-rim wheel, coupled with the fairly adequate Corsa instrument panel (entirely visible tachometer, but no oil pressure gauge or ammeter) takes care of the driver's seat quite nicely, but the back compartment remains a bit stark. He offers, for $21.95 installed, deep-pile carpeting for the back of the folding rear seat and the exposed rear panel. In addition to adding a note of elegance, Fitch claims some sound damping is provided, while the rug's surface prevents objects from sliding around during heavy cornering.
   A neighbor of Fitch's, and a fellow car nut, the famous and successful illustrator, Coby Whitmore, assisted in the design of the "Sprint Fastback 904 Ventop" which costs $102.00 installed and painted in black satin. The single most expensive item in the Sprint package, the "Ventop" or whatever you want to call it, makes for a striking change in the car's appearance. While it in no way interferes with visibility or aerodynamics, the top gives the car a hunched, mean-looking contour that we think is a real gas.
   Add to this milieu of go and show items a $3.75 Sprint gear shift knob of genuine "rich Brazilian Rosewood" and you've got the basic Sprint ensemble. You can buy another 20 or so items; everything from rear-seat sound insulation at $4.50 to a $184.00 special racing suspension. The car we tested had the regular Sprint equipment plus a passenger seat headrest ($18.95); a $5.95 headlight flasher; $35.00 worth of flat-black front-deck paint; a $12.95 seat bracket to give tall drivers more foot room and a set of four 13 x 5-inch Hands aluminum wheels ($198.00).